Selective call receivers, such as portable pagers data on information receivers, cellular telephones, personal communicators, and selectively addressed two-way radio receivers, are devices which can receive, and in some instances temporarily store and display, electronic alpha-numeric messages, also called pages or selective call signals, transmitted over the airway. Electronic messages come in various forms, including personal messages and mail drop messages. Mail drop messages are electronic data updates resulting from pre-registered services programmed into the device for receiving information on breaking news, sports including scores and statistics, or stock updates. Even more sophisticated selective call receivers are able to receive electronic mail messages from personal computers which may also be classified as mail drop messages.
Conventional selective call receivers store personal and mail drop messages in different areas of memory when received as determined by its management systems. The selective call receiver demodulates, decodes and processes the electronic message received to generate a user readable message on a conventional display screen. Once the electronic message is received, the selective call receiver stores the message and the user is prompted with an audible alert. The user may then retrieve the message from memory for display on the display screen at any desired time until it is deleted by the user. The display screen also facilitates the viewing of options when prompted by user inputs. In conventional devices, the display screen provides at least one line of display for message viewing and includes message icons on a startup screen to indicate the number of messages presently being stored and icons for deleting or locking (presents deletion) messages. When a message icon is activated, the selective call receiver retrieves the message corresponding to the icon from memory.
Messages are retrieved from memory and advanced for reading by buttons or keys. For example, "MENU" and "READ" keys, or the like, assist in finding, pulling up, or deleting the message while horizontal and vertical arrow keys, or scroll keys, advance through a message, messages or menu options in any direction as indicated by the key indicia. Typically, a message is retrieved by advancing a cursor across the screen with the horizontal scroll key until it highlights the desired message icon and pressing the READ key to retrieve the corresponding message for display on the screen. Once the message is activated, the user typically scrolls through the message one line at a time by actuating the vertical/line scroll keys repeatedly to read the message or to reach pertinent information in the message. If the user frequently references particular information in a message, they must scroll through the message in this manner each time. This may require many tedious keystrokes for particularly long messages. The user may advance through the message more quickly going screen-by-screen by activating the horizontal/screen scroll keys, or similar keys, repeatedly, but may miss the data they are looking for if the display screen provides more than one line of display.
The READ and MENU keys, or keys for activating similar options, are used for interrogating messages and manipulating messages, respectively, based on the menu option selected. When a READ, or READ-like, key is activated, the message corresponding to the highlighted message icon is retrieved from memory and displayed via the status screen for interrogating. While some selective call receivers have a preset message display feature that automatically advances the screens at predetermined time intervals, the READ key may also be used to interrupt this feature to stop the automatic scrolling. When the MENU or MENU-like key is actuated, a list of available options is indicated on the status screen with identification icons. The options made available usually include saving or deleting a message, and "locking" or "unlocking" a message to prevent or facilitate deleting, respectively.
It is common today to preprogram a pager with a message preview feature. This feature displays the first line or screen of a stored message on the startup screen when the corresponding message icon is highlighted by the cursor. The message preview feature, however, is usually useless for electronic and mail drop messages since these messages typically have standard headers with no valuable information in the first line or screen of the message to identify the message. If the message is not identifiable by the preview message on the startup screen, then the user must activate the message and scroll through it to identify the message and its source, thus defeating the purpose of the message preview.
Finally, selective call receiver memory/tier capacity for receiving and storing messages is becoming increasingly sophisticated for storing longer messages such as electronic mail, mail drops, and files. Consequently, message preview features are becoming obsolete and referencing messages for particular data is now less convenient. For instance, new high tier alpha-numeric pagers are projected to be capable of storing thousands of characters as personal messages and as mail drop messages. However, portable devices are limited in the number of characters they may display per screen (80 characters per screen for the typical pager). Therefore, a user may have to scroll through many screens before reading an entire message or finding needed data within the message. Since scrolling through the message is done by hitting a line scroll or screen scroll key, many keystrokes are normally required to advance a message to a target point. This is especially common for mail drop messages or electronic mail messages having hundreds or even thousands of characters and standard headers preceding the relevant information. Message preview features are also being rendered useless by standard headers, since headers usually take up the first screen of a message without revealing any valuable information for identifying the message. Moreover, many users repeatedly reference certain types of information in a message, such as, identification data including names, addresses and phone numbers, stock information, sports scores, etc., and would welcome a device that could automatically advance to commonly used data. Accordingly, even though selective call receivers, such as portable paging devices, are becoming increasingly sophisticated, these high tier alpha-numeric products are making it burdensome for their users to read messages and quickly reference common areas of interest within a message, and are rendering message preview features obsolete.
Since many service providers will continue to use standard headers for their mail drop pages, and since the size of messages being transmitted to selective call receivers will continue to increase, a more efficient means and friendlier selective call receiver for reading and scanning messages is needed. As current selective call receiver products do not provide enhanced features for quickly referencing information in a message on a repeated basis, an automatic message marking, tabbing and advancing feature for sorting through messages and directly advancing to marked areas of a message would be well received.